


a willow aslant a brook

by highboys (orphan_account)



Category: Kuroko no Basket
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/highboys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamlet AU borne from fanart with Ophelia-esque Kuroko.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a willow aslant a brook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [parallenium](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=parallenium).



> Really, this is just self-indulgent fic. Edited because WHAT ARE TENSES, WHAT IS GRAMMAR, also because Elsinore sounded way off and Teikou seemed to fit better. KING AKASHI + QUEEN MOMOI, YO?

i.

 

 

There is a willow aslant a brook, some miles away from the castle that you must have walked to, once.

With a satchel of bread in hand and your brother's in the other, your feet carry you to the river, past the weeds and the cattails, the thistles that cling to your clothes. Ryouta's hand sweep under your feet, plucking tiny blades of grass out of the skin, damp from the water. He kisses your toes, through the dirt, one, two, three.

"Stop," you say, "my feet aren't clean."

Through his lashes, he looks at you. His breath is cool against your skin; it makes you shiver, and not from heat.

"Stop," you say, again. "Or I'll push you into the water, see if I don't."

He laughs, at this. He raises his head and keeps your foot in his hands, his palms cupping the slight skin of your ankle, rubbing against the ridge of bone and nerves.

"Not if I drown you first," he says.

He doesn't.

 

 

ii.

 

 

Afternoons at Teikou, while Ryouta is away, Daiki filches apples from the kitchen, plucks pears from the baskets like they are his own.

Daiki has none of Ryouta's likeness, where Ryouta is all smoothness and flow, how his words are sweet to the ear and bitter to the soul. When Daiki feeds you from his clumsy fingers with unripe fruit, you pick at it and catch his hand; you kiss his mouth until the sourness stayed.

This is the prince of the castle and he is pure, clearer than the spots of brightness that linger in your eyes as you shield them from the mid-day sun. When he tackles you into the sedge, you think of nothing but his skin, so close to yours you feel that you would come undone. His hair,dark, falls across your cheek; you pass your palm over it, whispering his name.

If Ryouta only knew.

 

 

iii.

 

 

You pick flowers for his mother, the two of you. The marigolds, they left your arm with blotches of red across your skin, no lingering pain but sensitized.

He presses some chamomile to your wrist. Your pulse seems to roar wilder, at his touch, at the brush of it, viscous from his mouth, how he chewed it through the bitterness, raw. Small tenders of his affection, you thought, as you lower your mouth to his knuckles. He crooks his fingers around your chin.

When you walk home, past the thistles and the weeds and the bleating of goats across the green, Daiki keeps his hand in yours, closed and bruising until the stem comes out crushed, the flowers drooping from his hold.

In the shadows, you must have kissed him. You would kiss him again, if you could. If he were more gentle, and you were more forgiving.

 

 

iv.

 

 

Ryouta's letters to you speak of nothing but fear: fear for you, and fear for something else that lingers with the kiss he presses to his seal.

Daiki's letters come, in bits and spurts, after the first throes of fervent phrases, the electricity in the air, absent of Ryouta's name, and only yours and yours alone.

 

 

v.

 

 

You do not know what it is beyond the castle that changes people, that changes those you love the most. You only know that waiting is the most painful of all gifts.

 

 

vi.

 

 

In spring, the king dies. The king dies and the queen is crowned again.

In the hall, you look for him. The long line of his back, how his clothes seem to melt to his shadow. You long to trap him in the river, where it is cool, where it is only both of you that inhale the same air. Your pulse that beats in your wrist. How he held your hand through the soreness.

You were only children, then. Like this, he looks somber. More ill at ease. There is something in the set of his shoulders that makes you forget where you are supposed to be, and Ryouta's grasp on your arm stays you; it keeps you at bay.

"You should be more careful, of yourself," says Ryouta. It is easier to be cruel, without meaning to, when all you can breathe is Daiki's name.

Across the throne, Daiki's lips ghost a kiss to other rings. First, to his mother. Then, to his uncle. You touch Ryouta's cheek, absently, as you watch. Not a push, but it makes Ryouta flinch. "You should take your advice and keep it, I think."

Ryouta's lips thin out, but he surrenders to your fingers. The slightest hint of it makes him weak. "I'm afraid," he says.

"It doesn't matter," you say. "I'm happy."

 

 

vii.

 

 

The prince is mad.

The prince is mad and his fingers to your throat are searching and his mouth is a furious wreck and you are so, so lost all you can do is take whatever hurt he can give.

You try to remember how a boy smiled, watery through the shallows, how he'd known your name and only this. How you'd known his, too. How his mouth tasted like stolen fruit.

The prince is mad, you tell yourself. You pick yourself up from the floor, through trembling knees, and gather your clothes to you like a curtain.

 

 

viii.

 

 

 _And no one will ever harm you, brother_ , you read through the candle light, when you feel like the loneliness is too much to bear. _I promise_.

"I'm happy," you repeat, and the words fall to the stone like steel through an arras while you sleep.

It's the only comfort this place can afford.

 

 

ix.

 

 

If only you were more forgiving.

 

 

x.

 

 

Past the willow aslant a brook, past Ryouta's face, crumpled, as cold as the bones and flowers you offer to the queen, you try to remember some things.

First, that you were loved twice.

Second, that you were happy.

Third, that someone will catch you through the brambles and the weeds.

 

 

xi.

 

 

In your mouth is a song that you cannot sing, in your breast a wild fluttering. You pick flowers, in the hedges, until your feet stick with dirt and weeds. Your pulse beats. Your skin aches, red. Lingering.

Miles away, someone is dying and it is not yet you.

 

 

xii.

 

 

\-- Most of all, you remember he loved you best.

He must have, you think, through the mud on your cheeks, the water in your throat. He must have loved you more.

 

 

xiii.

 

 

There's only one name on your tongue when you close your eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

_too much of water hast though, poor Ophelia and therefore I forbid my tears._

 

 

 


End file.
